


Banshee

by ziyazu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Banshee Lydia Martin, Claudia Stilinski Feels, F/M, Lydia Had A Sister, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Stilinskis Like Redheads, Underage (But Nothing Happens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziyazu/pseuds/ziyazu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows it was her sister, now, in that car crash. Stiles let something slip, and he's not a stupid man. He knows who it was, whose hand he held while his wife slipped away from him across town. Whose eyes opened into his in her last moments, opened impossibly wide, dark blood and copper hair streaming down her face in the light of a huge, full moon, and told him to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Banshee

John doesn't think about it. He doesn't LET himself think about it. It wouldn't be fair to her or to Stiles or to anyone. He remembers her when she was a child, and for God's sake, for all she looks like a woman now, she's still a child. She’s a teenager. She's younger than his son.

John knows, better than most, the kind of names there are for a man who thinks that way. He isn't that man, and he won't be, he refuses to be. That is not who he is. That is not who his son has as a father, who this town has as a Sheriff. They all deserve better than where thinking of her would lead. So he doesn’t.

Mostly.

He knows it was her sister, now, in that car crash. Stiles let something slip, and he's not a stupid man. He knows who it was, whose hand he held while his wife slipped away from him across town. Whose eyes opened into his in her last moments, opened impossibly wide, dark blood and copper hair streaming down her face in the light of a huge, full moon, and told him to run.

He has no idea if it's hereditary, what she knew, or if it passed on to her sister when she died. He just knows what they all know: that Lydia has it now, the connection with death that resonates through her like a bell, clear and cold and furious. He just knows that there is an icy fire in his gut and it has burned him frozen ever since he realized just who she was.

The Stilinski men have always liked redheads, though. He remembers, in the months after Claudia died, nearly stopping Mrs Martin in the grocery store, nearly resting a hand on her shoulder, just for the moment before she turned her head when it might have been Claudia. The resemblance was close even without the hair, and her daughter has it too. He's always wondered if that particular turn in her countenance was something Stiles subconsciously remembered, focused on, was drawn to.

He tries not to see it himself, whenever flashes of strawberry-blonde whirl around his son. He tries not to see a face wan with illness – or a face etched with wet, flowing crimson. He tries to see a face impossibly young for his heart to skip the way it does. A face that holds hard above yet another body, fingers shaking, lips pressed tightly together on a scream she can’t help.

He is not that kind of man.

He doesn't need think of her, though, not really, not when she’s so much a part of their lives, so reliable a warning system for the evil that descends all too often on their tiny, forested town. He’s new to all of this, but he learns. They all need looking after, these kids, even Hale. They've been through too much, taken on too much, and he can't do anything about that but he can help now, so he does. He helps, and he watches.

The problem with watching, of course, is that you see – even things you aren't meant to. He knows she's spent nights in his son's bed.  He knows they're not really friends, might be more-than-friends, are definitely not not-friends the way they were for so many years.

It's good, he thinks. He thinks it's good. They seem like they need each other. That Jackson boy is gone now, and Scott has other responsibilities. Stiles needs someone to stand by him when his father can’t be there. He gets that now, and he’s grateful. He wishes he’d gotten it sooner. He wishes the darkness they’re fighting, that Stiles is fighting, wasn’t so very, very dark.

He wishes, and he watches. When they all go away to college, miraculously still alive, still standing, something in his chest eases a little.  Maybe he can let go now. 

And then she calls him again, out of the blue, the years without her rushing to a halt, his heart stopping dead in his chest.

_John? It’s me. I’m here, I’m back in town. It’s happened again, can you come?_

He hardly remembers the drive, can’t even hear his own sirens as he opens the patrol car door, because there she is. No longer a child, no longer a teenager, and he’s not sure he can ever explain why, to him, hope very suddenly looks like a tired young woman standing over a body, her eyes impossibly wide as her hair shines orange in the moonlight.

And when she kisses his cheek as he comes to stand beside her, small fingers tucking themselves under his arm, head falling heavy on his shoulder, his lets his gaze linger, because he knows by now that death deals in gifts.

He gave a gift that night, under a full moon just like tonight's. He helped one girl into death as he lost his wife, and maybe now, at long last, death is repaying him in kind.


End file.
